2006 The Lives of Others
This Academy award picture, Best Foreign Film 2006. This film slid by me and is perhaps more powerful for it the way great pictures resonate with time as a second thought, a frightening glimpse of East Germany’s recent past. A by-the-book Stasi agent, highly regarded for his unparalleled interrogation skills, wears confessions out of his victims by night and teaches his tactics as though his methods are an art form by day. Ironically he is soon charged to test his art form on one of Berlin’s famous creative couples, a playright and his actress girlfriend. As secrets of their lives are revealed through all the bugs in their walls the unshakable Stasi agent begins to explore his own deeply locked emotions… is it the art of others which might unlock compassion in this steely faced pawn of the brutal Berlin regime? This is a moving film about what life is like in autocratic regimes, and it reminds me to ask questions about the alarming steps our government has taken against its citizens under the auspices of a ‘war on terror’. I waved this banner feverishly until I started looking deeply at our government and the hundred bullet points that make clear the American citizen was not told the full truth about 911.
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